I haven't done this in awhile, but I think it needs ONE more attempt to clarify words.

"Traditional" used to mean specifically ...'that music handed down from the era(s) before recordings and commercial promotions, largely thru oral means, and which survived because people saved the good and allowed the bad to sink into relative obscurity'....or some such basic definition.
   Now, if one begins to use phrases like "Well, all music is traditional,..., the very word begins to lose clarity. It NEEDS to have a reasonably precise and useful referent. Using 'trad' as a sweeping definition for '..all the stuff that we remember and sing & play because we are not horses' just dilutes the meaning and makes it harder TO refer to the old, seminal roots OF what we do today.

It is not about good or bad... or about whether writing NEW songs is acceptable....of course writing new songs is good, important, valuable and often of a quality (like Utah Phillips or Eric Bogle...etc...) that it will BE part of 'trad' in a hundred years. IF a song is so well-liked that it is shared and incorporated until one has to look up in Google to even find the author or origin, then 'trad' has expanded...but beware of calling 20 year old stuff 'trad', **just** because it was part of your early memories....etc.

Ok... lecture over for a couple of years... carry on.

(Oh...and by the way... Elizabeth LaPrelle and her mother, Sandy, sing for fun many, many songs that are far from "...rock bottom traditional...", but they KNOW the difference and will tailor a performance suitably.)